OFFBEAT GAMES
Team Building Takes Turn: Fun and Philanthropy
By SANDI CAIN
There was a time when “fun” at a company event meant a tug-of-war that employees played only after considerable arm-twisting.
Today, meeting planners are much more creative in designing morale and team-building activities, which are used for everything from helping charities energize sales teams to creating a comfortable atmosphere for a group that has language barriers.
Among the activities in vogue with groups: scavenger hunts of all kinds, sailing regattas and bicycle building.
Following is a look at some of the twists Orange County companies and event planners have used at recent events:
Resort Philanthropy
Santa Ana-based computer products distributor Ingram Micro Inc. gave up traditional ways of bringing workers closer together several years ago, said Marsha Willett, director of corporate events.
“After a while, executives and attendees tired of it, so I proposed we take the idea of team building and turn it into philanthropy,” she said.
Now incentive groups that go
to resorts in St. Thomas, Scotts-dale and Hawaii build homeless shelters, remodel ramshackle homes or help rebuild a learning center for young mothers.
“We spend time at the resorts and it’s nice to give back to the communities in ways besides what we spend at the hotels,” Willett said.
The biggest challenge, Willett said, is to find the projects,
“We need one that 125 or so people can do at the same time,” she said.
Willett works through local destination management companies to locate projects and then meets with them personally to evaluate their potential.
“We learned that when we do this, we get feedback from local companies that learn about the project and then donate supplies, time or money to the effort,” she said.
In St. Thomas, Ingram Micro volunteers raised $38,000 for beds and other supplies.
Willett has spoken about Ingram’s program at meetings of professional meeting planners and has seen other companies take up the idea.
“Everyone (at Ingram Micro) gets more into this than any other team-building activity we’ve ever done,” she said. “I’ve had a problem sometimes because they don’t want to leave the site in the designated time.”
Bicycle Built for Charity
Building bikes for charity was an activity created by Tim Brown, partner of Newport Beach-based Meeting Sites Resource.
One group was divided into teams and given bicycle kits to assemble. After the bike was built, a member of the team had to drive it around a course set up with traffic cones. There were prizes for the race winners, race-oriented centerpieces,and the bikes went to a children’s home.
“Some people would lay out parts, others just dived in to start putting it together. It forced people to interact differently,” Brown said.
For workers at Fullerton-based medical device maker Beckman Coulter Inc., there was a different twist to bike building: It was used as an icebreaker for meeting attendees from around the globe.
“We have some language barriers with employees, so this keeps verbal needs to a minimum,” said Carmen Arias, meeting planner.
Beckman teams build two bicycles each, decorate them and then do a bike relay,training wheels and all, Arias said.
Winners are determined by speed, creative d & #233;cor and race results and finished bikes are donated to a children’s charity,after inspection by bicycle experts.
“Team building has worked well and been well-received,” she said.
The New Detectives
Scavenger hunts are popular team-building events because they can suit almost any location or time period.
Contestants and planners can get pretty creative with them, too.
Barbara Sloate, president of Costa Mesa-based Whirl-A-Round Tours, plans corporate events for groups such as the Institute for Real Estate Manage-ment and Japan’s Softbank Corp.
One of her favorite activities for sales groups is a photo scavenger hunt in which teams receive a camera and are sent off to find clues, take a photo of each find and let the clues lead them to their final destination,often their dinner location.
Finds might include a picture with a FedEx driver or a fisherman, or simply finding tourist spots around the county. The catch: Teams don’t know the dinner destination unless they find all the clues.
To soothe hungry,but frustrated,teams, Sloate provides an emergency number for teams to call if they get stuck.
“We had to start giving each team a password to use if they called,” she said. “Otherwise, they’d give another team’s name out of embarrassment.”
Scavenger hunts via Duffy Electric boats in Newport Beach are popular with local companies, according to Brett Jarvis, partner in Laguna Beach-based International Site Alliance.
Robb Thornsberry, president of Infinity Events in Irvine, uses the Duffy boats for out-of-town groups whose itinerary includes finding celebrity homes along the bay.
Jarvis also arranged a walking scavenger hunt of Laguna Beach for a group staying at the Four Seasons in Fashion Island.
“We included historic and fun things, like the Greeter statue at the (former) Pottery Shack, Five Feet restaurant, a Hare Krishna. They even had to find a dog on beach with a ball that contained their next clue,” Jarvis said.
The Disneyland Resort’s Disney Institute has a scavenger hunt dubbed “Pluto’s Pursuit” that takes attendees through Disneyland or Disney’s California
